October 10, 2016 by MMA trainer with 1 comment

Training at Bjj – Building powerful, applicable strength

I thought it would be good to outline a practical strength training routine for a BJJ exponent.

Strength training is especially important to do wisely, because heavy strength training can quite easily add a lot of weight to your body, and this can be a problem if you’re competing, because it can push you into a higher weight class, which you may not necessarily want.

So what you’re actually searching for is increase in power without necessarily a massive increase in weight. I’m assuming a small increase in weight is acceptable, and indeed is inevitable, because muscles are generally quite compact and heavy.

So, as you increase muscle mass, you’re bound to increase in weight to some extent.

However, there are special exercises that you can do that will increase muscle strength in a greater power to weight ratio than other exercises. For example, one thing that I believe BJJ athletes who are training for strength should avoid is the heavy squat. The heavy squat tends to add a lot of muscle mass, but on the other hand it also can massively add to your weight, leading to inefficient power to weight ratio.

What many people don’t realize is that single leg weight exercises can add a lot of strength and capability to your BJJ, without necessarily adding to bodyweight.

If you think about it, you’ll see that a lot of the training that you do on the mat actually draws strength from a single leg rather than from both legs together, therefore being able to use each leg independently of each other to generate strength can be a massive advantage on the mat, and can translate into a lot of additional power to use against your opponent.

Gaining strength in the single leg as opposed to dual strength exercises like the squat can also be useful in maintaining stances that cannot easily be broken or in breaking holes that depend upon leg strength.

But the most important point is that the single leg training doesn’t massively increase the weight of your entire body the way a squat would, resulting in much more power available for your BJJ without a similar increase in weight.

This allows you to increase your power while remaining within the weight class for competitions that you are used to.

One very good plan to increase your strength for BJJ is to start out with 5 reps of a reasonable weight for the bench press, which you will do two sets of. Follow this with five intense pull-ups, which again you will do two sets of. Then you can go for a single leg dead lift, or even a single leg pulley system. Go for heavy weights here and just do two reps per set, but do five sets for a total of ten repetitions.

You can do a few Bulgarian squats after that, and then go out onto the mats for a light rolling session that involves practicing your grip and using abdominal strength.

The next day after this you can start out with military presses that involve doing three or four sets of three repetitions each. After this go in for five sets of chin-ups that can range from three to five repetitions per set. After this you go out onto the mats again for another light rolling session that involves using the arms and legs to power your movements.

After this I would recommend a rest day before repeating the cycle.

A month of two of this training should see a considerable increase in your strength.

Of course it goes without saying that for this to work you need to be competing strenuously on the mat at least four days per week. I have put in very light gym training to account for strenuous exertion on the mat and to prevent overtraining the muscles.